When services or products are sourced from outside providers, business relationships must be managed with those providers. As the number and complexity of externally sourced services increases, the effort to manage the contractual business relationships with those service providers increases as well. Currently relationships of this nature are managed manually by dedicated administrative departments. In a future of pervasive cloud services and increased globalization, more business and IT functions are expected to be provided by external service providers, leading to an increased effort to manage the relationships with those service providers.
Throughout the drawings, identical reference numbers designate similar, but not necessarily identical, elements.